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The Riggs Report: Stillborn reform at the Capitol

Modesto Assemblymember Kristin Olsen is not naïve about the political process. But even she was taken aback by how quickly her Capitol colleagues squashed her efforts this week to promote transparency and stop unsavory dead-of-night deal-making.

Olsen is the author of a proposed constitutional amendment, ACA 4, that would require all bills to be in print for at least 72 hours before a vote can be taken. That would, in effect, put a stop to the secret backroom agreements that characterize the chaotic final days of session in late summer.

It highlights a long-established practice known as "gut-and-amend" in which bills are stripped of their original content and morph into something entirely different.

Groups like the League of California Cities, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and Common Cause hailed Olsen's reform as necessary to ensure accountability and transparency.

The measure never had a chance. This week, Olsen's bill was scheduled to be heard by an Assembly budget subcommittee. But before testimony began, lawmakers on the panel moved swiftly to place the measure on the suspense file.

More accurately, the suspense file commonly serves as a graveyard for measures that make lawmakers uncomfortable.

Olsen acknowledged, in a statement, that it's "where most bills effectively go to die." In a phone interview, she told me the committee's criteria for burying the bill were murky.

"It appears to be arbitrary, up to the will of the chair. That was surprising. It's hard to increase sunshine when these bills don't see the light of a vote," Olsen said.

That is the point. Putting the measure on suspense is a convenient maneuver, since it means no vote need be taken. Lawmakers aren't on the record in favor or opposition, meaning they don't have to answer questions about a vote that never took place.

Olsen, a Republican, isn't alone in her efforts. Identical measures are being carried in the Senate by Lois Wolk and Mark DeSaulnier, both Democrats.

But institutional resistance is hard, if not impossible, to overcome. It would take a two-thirds vote of the Legislature simply to put the issue on the ballot.

Two years ago, lawmakers approved an education budget bill that was printed 15 minutes before the vote. Nobody knew what was in it, Olsen says. It actually eliminated home-to-school transportation funding, which tied school districts in knots.

The process also produced a last-minute bill last year to earmark millions in redevelopment funds for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. The year before, a bill on teacher credentialing transformed into a measure fast-tracking environmental review of a new football stadium in Los Angeles.

Defenders of the practice say the end justifies the means; that delaying the process gives special interests a chance to pull a deal apart.

None of this is new, of course.

When Willie Brown was speaker, the Legislative clock would mysteriously stop at midnight; a "malfunction" that would let the deal-making continue. Everyone simply looked the other way.

In this case, looking the other way means keeping the public in the dark, and increasing cynicism about how the Legislature views the people's business.